Sensitivity
by DeniseV
Summary: Sensitivity: awareness of the needs and emotions of others. Right. A shocking event finally makes John Sheppard see the error of his ways. Post Trinity drama,angst. T for language.


"What exactly is your point, McKay?"

"My point, Colonel, is that whatever happened to you on that planet seems to have affected you in an extremely negative way."

"Is that right?" John challenged, rolling his chair towards Rodney in a threatening manner. McKay moved his own chair back a few inches. "Nothing happened," Sheppard added menacingly.

"All right. That's enough." Dr. Elizabeth Weir was having a hard time determining if what Atlantis' chief science officer was saying was true. Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard hadn't acted in a civil manner toward Rodney McKay since Doranda. It had been nearly two months since that incident, and every briefing since then had been tense. And that was being kind. These two still seemed to have a way to go to regain their footing as teammates, let alone as friends.

"Carson, you've done your post-mission exams. Have you found anything to support Rodney's claims?" Elizabeth asked.

"Are you saying that I'm imagining this?" McKay asked, abrasive and offended.

"Knock it off, McKay," Sheppard warned.

Dr. Carson Beckett coughed in order to break up the impending confrontation between his two friends and to bring the attention back to Elizabeth's question. He looked at Rodney warily as he said, "All four of them seem perfectly healthy."

"Really?" Rodney asked, his tone challenging both the physician's judgment and his standing as a friend.

"Shut up, McKay," Sheppard instructed threateningly.

"Yes, Rodney," Beckett continued. "All of the tests are normal. The colonel seems to be acting about the same as he has been." What Beckett left unsaid was commentary enough about how he felt about John's behavior of late. Specifically, the way he'd been treating Rodney since McKay's calamitous, failed actions to get the Ancients' Arcturus project to work.

"Is that so? You haven't noticed a slight change in his personality since we got back?"

"McKay!" Sheppard warned again as he sat simmering near the physicist. McKay sensed the heat of anger to his right. He chose not to witness it, instead keeping his eyes on Carson.

"No, I haven't. Nothing that I haven't seen too much of lately already."

"What's that supposed to mean?" John demanded angrily.

"You see, that's what I'm saying." John turned to face Rodney. McKay jumped, but continued on. "There's a, um," he started, but Sheppard's blazing eyes were messing with his concentration. "There's more anger in his demeanor than seems appropriate…"

"Maybe I'm just extra touchy when it comes to you?" the colonel suggested.

"I doubt that's it," Rodney replied calmly.

"Well then maybe if you would shut the fuck up, I wouldn't have to be so angry!"

"John!" Elizabeth Weir yelled.

"See, that's what I'm trying to tell you. He's danger…oomph." The room echoed with a vicious crack as Sheppard punched McKay, fast and hard, in the mouth. It was an upper cut, and done with amazing force. The scientist, and his chair, flew to the wall behind them, McKay's head smacking against the formidable firmness. The chair ricocheted off the wall and Rodney bounced out of his seat and slumped unconscious to the floor.

"Sheppard!" Ronon Dex yelled, jumping from his chair to restrain his team leader from further action.

"John!" Weir and Teyla Emmagen joined in, shouting the colonel's name in disbelief.

"Oh, good heavens," Carson Beckett said, running to his unconscious friend's side.

Elizabeth tapped her headset. "Medical team to the briefing room." She turned to Ronon and said, "Keep him secure."

But that wouldn't be necessary. John Sheppard was going nowhere. He stood, not far from where McKay had landed, and watched as Carson checked over his teammate. His…he thought 'friend', but how could that be? He'd just clocked McKay, but good. What had he done?

Ronon grabbed hold of Sheppard's arm.

"I'm, uh, I don't. I don't know…" John said, trailing off, not really knowing what to say, the burden of what he'd just done, of what he'd been doing for weeks now, showing clearly on his face.

"Take him to security. Have him put in custody," Elizabeth ordered sadly.

"No. Have him taken to isolation," Beckett said as he wiped as much blood from Rodney's nose and mouth as he could, given that his only equipment currently consisted of napkins from near the coffee pot. "He could be contagious."

"But Carson, you…"

"I know what I said, Elizabeth. Clearly I missed something." He would deal with that guilt later. He went back to his patient. "Rodney, can you hear me?" He took his flashlight and checked McKay's pupils.

Elizabeth and Teyla stood by, watching worriedly as Rodney failed to come to, Elizabeth with her arms crossed, and Teyla ready to jump in should Ronon need any assistance. Ronon started to push Sheppard from the room, but the Air Force man resisted, as firm in his determination to stay put as he was in his punch landing where he'd intended.

"I, uh, McKay. Doc, is he going to be okay?"

Carson Beckett raised his head to face Rodney's attacker. "Colonel, I know now that I should have listened more closely to what Rodney was sayin'. Your wild mood swings…"

"This isn't a mood swing, god damn it! He's my fr…" He couldn't think 'friend' earlier; now he couldn't force it from his lips, sensitive to how it would sound in this room, in front of these people. "Just tell me," John pleaded.

"I don't know. His eyes look all right. His nose may be broken. I won't…" Beckett was interrupted by gagging coming from the floor.

Rodney leaned over, with assistance from Carson, and choked out blood. He was locked in an unfortunate cycle of gagging on the blood running down his throat from his nose, and then having his body reject the vile liquid by vomiting it up. To add to his misery, McKay's nose was clogging with congealing blood; breathing was becoming difficult.

"Cars'n…can't…" McKay started to say, but he was interrupted again by the gagging. "Breathe," he added, knowing that his chances of saying much beyond that any time soon were becoming slim.

"Hold on, Rodney. This is going to be uncomfortable." The med team had arrived, and Carson immediately asked for instruments to help clear Rodney's nose, and suction to get more of the blood out of his nose and throat, enough to hopefully clear up an airway until Beckett could get McKay to the infirmary.

"Uuuuh. God. Better," Rodney said, sentences as yet beyond his ability. "Head. Hurts."

"Head? Rodney, are you with me, lad?" Carson asked. He felt behind Rodney's head and found what he suspected: a bump where the scientist had cracked his head against the wall.

"McKay?" Sheppard called. Rodney jumped and his breathing increased to a rapid rate.

"Calm down, Rodney. You're okay." Beckett turned from McKay a moment and said, "Elizabeth?" Weir walked up close and knelt beside the chief medical officer. "Could you please have Colonel Sheppard taken to isolation?" he asked softly. "I think Rodney would calm down better if he weren't here."

"Of course." She turned, walked up to John and said, "Please go with Ronon." She could see Sheppard readying to object. "Carson and Rodney will be right behind you. You need to go to isolation until we figure out what's going on."

John Sheppard's anger was clear as it boiled to the surface once again, though this anger seemed more in line with 'old' John Sheppard: worrying about his team, his entire team. It seemed like McKay had been left out of that equation lately.

"I'm his team leader! I have a right to stay!"

Elizabeth tapped her radio once more. "Security to…"

"Here, ma'am," Major Lorne said. "Well, I'm here with a security team." Dr. Weir looked confused by the major's presence. "Teyla called me and said there seemed to be some trouble."

"Stand down, Lorne," Sheppard commanded.

"Sorry, sir. Would you please come with me?"

"No!" John yelled. Ronon and the security team escorted a struggling John Sheppard from the room.

Rodney tried to crawl further from the yelling. He was still confused about where he was, but he clearly remembered that he had reason to fear the colonel right now.

"Rodney, it's okay. Calm down, son, and let me finish examining you. I'd like to get you to the infirmary as quickly as we can."

"Me, too," McKay said. Carson smiled. That was a right typical Dr. Rodney McKay reply, and exactly what the physician needed to hear.

* * *

Carson was ready to transport his patient in five minutes. Five minutes after that they were in the infirmary. More cleaning and clearing of blood and McKay was ready for an MRI and x-rays. The sooner Beckett checked his friend's brain for anything serious, the sooner he could sedate McKay, which is what Rodney really seemed to need right then more than anything. McKay's blood pressure was very high, but who wouldn't have a negative reaction to being attacked by someone you respected and trusted. No matter what had gone on between these two, Carson Beckett knew that his friend still felt that way about the colonel. It had seemed painfully clear that the colonel didn't return those feelings.

Beckett was astounded that McKay's nose didn't appear broken. Rodney's one loose and one cracked tooth, as well as a badly swollen tongue, were proof of the power of the punch. It was lucky that the punch landed lower, though, and the fact that Rodney had been talking while being hit seemed the only explanation for the lack of a broken jaw. But he'd taken a lot of trauma to his head and his face, the impact alone causing plenty of damage in burst blood vessels and cartilage without any breaks; the MRI and x-rays would verify his findings, and the quicker the better.

Elizabeth showed up just as Beckett was sending McKay for some imaging.

"How is he?" she asked.

"He's pretty beat up. I don't think anything's broken. He was having trouble breathing through the blood, plus there is a lot of swelling, and he has a tendency to panic," Carson began.

"You can't blame him for that," Weir noted.

"No, not this time. This was a pretty unexpected turn of events."

"Unexpected to everyone but Rodney, it seems."

"True."

"Any word on John?" the Atlantis expedition leader asked, a worried tinge to her voice.

"No. I've been getting Rodney stabilized. He's in some pain. I want to get some pain medication and a mild sedative in him, pending the MRI. I'm heading to John now. I sent Kate to observe him."

"Good. I'd like to join you while you evaluate him."

"Elizabeth, I think it might be better if we handled this as we would any unusual behavior from a member of the expedition. Just medical personnel, for now. I'll call you as soon as we're through."

"Understood," Elizabeth agreed reluctantly. "Keep me posted."

"Of course."

Carson made his way to isolation. Kate Heightmeyer was making notes in her handheld, sitting in a chair just outside the room where John Sheppard sat, alone.

"So, how's our other patient?" Beckett asked the psychiatrist as he looked in through the window. "He looks tired. Weary."

"Yes. Tired from worry, I'd say. To be perfectly frank, he seems perfectly fine. He's calm, he's reasonable, he's remorseful about punching McKay. He's a little angry about being locked up, but he's not showing any excess anger or violent tendencies."

"Just like before he hit Rodney," Beckett said.

"Well, no. Not according to Colonel Sheppard. He claims that he felt a distinct hostility towards Rodney, and that it grew the more Rodney spoke and challenged his actions. He says he can't explain it. He thinks McKay was right, that something happened to him on that planet."

"I found nothing in any of his post-mission testing," Carson said regretfully.

"Maybe whatever it was doesn't present with any physiological evidence," Heightmeyer suggested.

"Maybe not, but it apparently presented with some behavioral evidence that only Rodney recognized."

"Carson, we all know that Sheppard and McKay had strained relations recently. Our perspectives are a little different from Rodney's. He would see nuances, slight changes that the rest of us might not. We have all been watching the colonel's anger manifest itself to borderline abusive with McKay. And it's certainly been rude. And angry. I'm sure you all thought you were watching more of the same. Rodney's a pretty sensitive guy…" Carson raised his eyebrow, a little suspect of that particular observation. "He's your good friend," she said, smiling knowingly, "you know it's true, despite what he projects to the masses. I'm sure he felt the same shift that Colonel Sheppard described to me."

"Before recent events, they were very close. I had hoped they would resolve their differences," Carson said sadly.

"I'm sure they will. All of this might actually help there."

"Do you think the colonel is still experiencing this anger?" Beckett asked.

"I don't think that he is," Kate answered, "but John is worried. He doesn't want to stay under observation, but he doesn't want to endanger anyone, either."

"I'll need to perform more tests," Carson said as he looked through the window at his friend. Despondent pretty much described the picture before him. Sheppard was definitely feeling the correct emotion now. "We don't know what caused this, and we really need to know if the behavior is isolated to the colonel or if we have a bigger problem on our hands."

"A contagion? I doubt it. I should think we would have heard of more incidents by now. And I'm afraid our window for analyzing this might have passed now that the colonel seems back to normal."

"Aye. But we need to try to find out what we can," Carson said as he spoke with the expedition's chief psychiatrist. He nodded toward Sheppard. "We have patient zero. Let's get started."

* * *

Teyla and Ronon showed up less than two hours later, looking for an update on their friends.

"I told Elizabeth that we needed time to work through this. Did she not tell ya?" Beckett asked as he stood his ground, not allowing them entry.

"She did, but we thought that we might check on them," Teyla suggested hopefully.

"We are performing additional tests on the colonel…"

"How is he?" Ronon demanded.

"As I said," Carson explained patiently, "we'll know more once we have completed…"

Teyla placed her hand on Carson's arm, quieting him. "I believe that Ronon wanted to know if John was acting more like himself," she clarified with a sad smile.

Carson smiled back at the pretty Athosian, patted her hand affectionately, and answered, "He does seem more himself now."

"That's good," Ronon stated emphatically.

"Aye, 'tis, but we don't understand yet what caused his extreme reactions and why he's not like that now."

"You do not know that this might not happen again," Teyla said.

"Correct."

"Can we see Rodney?" she asked, her eyes full of hope and concern.

"I'm afraid not. He's been sedated, and I have him on pain medication. He will sleep for a while." The two members of Atlantis' premiere off-world team looked sad and lost. And worried. "Look," Carson said in an effort to appease the pair, "I'll contact you as soon as Rodney feels up to visitors. I'll warn you, he took a hard and direct hit in the face, and another knock on the back of his head. He doesn't have a concussion, but his face is terribly bruised and swollen and based on lots of experience dealing with the man when he's hurt, he may not want any visitors for a while." The physician looked back and forth between the two. "He may not feel up for a chat before tomorrow."

Teyla nodded. She saw the explanation for what it was: a kind and gentle doctor trying to protect his patients but not offend his patients' friends. And family.

"We understand," Teyla said in acceptance.

"We do?" Dex asked. Teyla looked up at the Satedan, her eyebrow raised impressively in warning.

"Yes, we do," she said to Ronon. He huffed and crossed his arms. "Dr. Beckett, we will await word from you before returning."

"Thank you, dear."

* * *

"It's been seven hours and the colonel shows no signs of his rage from before."

"But you haven't found anything to indicate why this happened?" Elizabeth Weir asked the CMO.

"No. Nothing. There is nothing in his blood work, his urinalysis, MRI, any of the Ancient scanners that shows anything wrong. He seems perfectly healthy," Carson said, perplexed.

"And he has shown no further signs of the anger he demonstrated toward McKay," Kate Heightmeyer reported.

"Nothing?" Weir added, happy to hear about these findings, but unhappy and apprehensive about what that meant for the future.

"No. Just a completely expected anger with himself, but that, too, has subsided."

"He agrees with the current assumption that something alien affected him," Carson continued. "But whatever it was seems to have run its course. We certainly hope that it has."

"But you have no way of knowing for sure?" Weir asked.

"No."

"And no one else has shown similar symptoms?" Elizabeth asked, wanting to believe that this episode was over. The answers she was hearing from the medical staff weren't providing all that much closure.

"No, thank god. I believe we are clear there."

"Clear like the nanovirus," Elizabeth noted. "Only this time we just got lucky," she paused, and then added ominously, "we think."

"Aye."

"John is still in isolation?" Teyla asked.

"Yes, but I'm going to release him, though I suspect I'll be blessed with his presence around my infirmary, at least until Rodney wakes."

"Is McKay gonna be okay?" Ronon asked.

"Aye, eventually. He'll be sore, he'll most likely have a headache, a persistent one, for a while. Though the MRI showed nothing serious, I'd prefer that he not move around too much for the next couple of days. Getting hit like that from the front and back isn't one of my favorite things to see. He's going to look like hell, but that will match how he feels. Nothing major was broken, he was very lucky. He cracked a tooth and another one is loose…we'll have him to the dentist once the swelling and the bruising eases."

"They need to talk," Heightmeyer said.

"Yes, they do," Beckett agreed.

"They will," Weir said firmly.

* * *

"It's been a long day. You should go to your quarters and get some sleep."

"He's okay, right? I mean, he's been out a long time," Sheppard said, his voice so full of worry and concern for his friend it was hard to fathom that this was the same man who'd knocked McKay out just short of twelve hours ago.

"He's been through quite a lot of trauma, both physical and emotional, John. His body's doing the right thing. Rest is best," Carson assured.

"That's pretty trite, even for you, Doc."

"Yes, well. You should go," Carson said, patting the colonel on his shoulder.

"He's bound to wake up soon. I'd…I think I should be here. I want to…you know."

"What?" Beckett encouraged.

"Come on, you know. I want to apologize."

"What for?"

"What…what do you mean, what for? He's laying there with a broken face because of me."

Carson nodded his head. "Is that all?"

John Sheppard looked at his frustrating Scottish friend. He knew what this was, and it was just like Beckett to be the one to force the discussion. He figured he was lucky to have such a frustrating friend. Why was it that both of his closest friends had to be so frustrating?

"No."

"You're aware, John, that no one recognized your behavior as peculiar this morning. That has got to change. He's your friend, man. Don't you think you've made him suffer enough?"

"After today? Looking at this? Of course."

"You don't think that was true before you punched him?"

"Apparently I needed a shock of my own to get my head out of my ass."

"Who sez you s'ceeded?" came the slurred response from the bed.

"Look who's decided to join the living again," Carson said as he went to check on his patient, pressing his hand comfortingly against John's shoulder.

"Hav'n't 'ffici'lly d'cided that," Rodney retorted smartly, though sluggishly.

"How do you feel?" the physician asked as he checked pulse and respiration the old fashioned way, despite the monitors showing him the same. Touch had always been an important part of his care giving; it was especially so for his close friends.

"Sore. Tired. Hungry?"

"Yes. You should sleep some more. I've got you on an IV. You can eat tomorrow."

"Gotta pee."

"That's taken care of, too."

"Oh? Ah, crap. Didn't I only get punched? God, it hurts to talk. Hate cath'ters. Aaaaaah-oh," he added as his body gave up the fight, the groan displaying both the relief and the discomfort in the release.

"If it hurts to talk then you should stop talking," Carson suggested reasonably.

"Wasn't Sheppard here?" McKay asked, ignoring the advice, a yawn offered by the injured man looking terribly painful. A groan confirmed that it was.

"I'm here, Rodney," the colonel answered hesitantly.

"You okay?" the scientist asked.

John and Carson looked at each other and grinned, shaking their heads at their friend.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. How're you feeling?"

"Could be better. Face hurts."

"Yeah, uh, sorry about that," Sheppard said.

"Weren't yourself," McKay said, dismissing the apology.

John snorted bitterly and asked, "How could you tell?"

Rodney struggled to keep his eyes open to answer. "Stupid," he said, but his eyes appeared ready to stay closed.

"He's half asleep and he still manages to insult me." Carson smirked as he checked some more readings.

"No," Rodney said as he opened his eyes and stared at John. "You're stupid if you think," he yawned again and a hiss of pain followed. "Ow," he added before continuing, "I don't know you better." A couple of deep breaths were followed by, "Obvious you weren't yourself." This time, the deep breathing continued, turning into the breathing of deep sleep.

"Pretty sensitive, indeed," Carson said softly.

"Huh?" John asked, not really catching what the doctor had said. He was too happy to hear – to know that Rodney had already forgiven him, at least for the TKO. The other stuff…

"Nothing. Just something that Kate said to me." Beckett watched as Rodney fell into a much-needed slumber. "Come back tomorrow. Talk with him."

"I will," John Sheppard promised, his burden not so heavy anymore.

The End.


End file.
